dkrolak

Welcome aboard.

One of the uses of section W occurs when your kettle is not big enough for the brew you want to do. It allows you to use the full amount of grain but to add water later to bring your volume up to whatever you want. In your file (I can't find the original) you are adding 5 litres after the mashout and before the boil. You could forego that and use all the water initially. Your kettle is big enough.

If you remove the 5 litres "after boil" value you will see that the SWN alters by about 5 litres but the TWN barely alters. The grain bill will reduce slightly.

I also see that the hop bill AA% has been modified from 5.3% to 4.3% in section D. As I understand it, the substituted values are normally used only if your hops AA% value is different than those used in the original recipe.

The Auto Kettle Efficiency has been adjusted by 5% in Section X. If this is your first run on your equipment I would remove that and run with the Biabacus defaults.

I use a 10 min mashout but I don't have a reason for that. (Like a lot of other stuff I do)

And last of all "relax". It's hard to make an undrinkable beer and your next one will always be better.

Majorphill

Majorphill writes the best posts. I thought he had written heaps more than ten posts here but no, just ten, so for me to notice them, every one must have been excellent. Nice job mp .

And welcome to the forum dk ,

Let's take a look at your file...

Okay, all is looking great except we have 5 litres of water added before the boil. This is not necessary as far as I can see because that 5 litres will fit in your kettle right at the beginning, easily.

The kettle shape adjustment numbers are impossible to check I think unless you post a diagram of your kettle and all the relevant measurements.

Anyway, the main thing that is worrying me now is that 5 litre thing.


PP

Hi dkrolak,

Two great answers there, I notice your comment on the checklist. The way I use this, is as a Brewday preflight (and through the day) checklist.

Fill it out (with timings) of all the steps you need to do.

Make notes on how complete / useful these notes are, then modify it for the next brew.

Mine is about 20-25 lines long, feels a bit like being at school, but it means I can relax, have a brew, learn from each batch, and have fun without worrying.

Each Brewer I have spoken to has heir own routine, which is why it had been left blank for you you fill in.

If you are like the two brewers above, they are very experience and do not need all the waffle I add into mine.

I even add in a Clean up, section to avoid hassle from 'er-in-doors' makes it a more relaxing day.

dkrolak

A mashout is heating your mash to a temperature to stop the enzymes from doing further starch conversion and it makes the mash a little less viscous allowing for it to drain more freely. I feel the viscosity factor is of more importance to a three vessel brewer who sparges than it is to a BIAB brewer. A pulley is not used for mashout (Although it's great for pulling your mash out after your mashout ).

I do a 10 minute mashout at 78 degrees C for no other reason than I can. I start my 10 minutes when I reach 78 degrees.

There is a line of thought that says a mashout is not needed as you are heating towards a boil temperature anyway. You are going to be at mashout temperatures for a while and any enzymes still working are going to be denatured by default.

I have no idea about your fermentation temperatures but one of the other members here will be able to help you on that.

If you want a clear beer you need to try to force the yeast out of suspension and to settle to the bottom of your fermenter before you package it. One way to do that is to cold crash it. Thats a fancy way of saying drop the temperature of your fermenter to about 3 or 4 degrees for a couple of days before packaging. Filtering is a mechanical way of achieving the same outcome.

I don't do either and my beer is still drunk.

PP

Thanks for the kind words. I have learnt to brew from this site along with AHB and I'll try to repay where I can.

Majorphill

Got to race (lucky for you guys ) so I will hopefully be brief.

............

As Yettiman said, having a checklist can serve many brewers really well. I think the one here probably has about 80 lines in it from memory. (Needs revising as it has rehydrating yeast etc in it.) I definitely used a checklist (that one I linked actually) until things became innate/automatic for me. Getting things ready the day before also makes a real difference when you are starting out.

As a matter of interest, introducing a very basic and simple checklist system into hospitals resulted in... After implementing checklists in eight ... ally does. See here for more info.

............

As majoprphil said above, the mash-out doesn't have to occur for any length of time in BIAB as all contact with water ceases when you pull the bag. I'm rusty on all the chemistry of this if not completely ignorant but in BIAB, do a mash-out if you can as it prolongs your mash and makes the 'sweet liquor' slightly more runny.

On your cold crashing, the Major is talking degrees celsius above and you can actually go very low when cold crashing. I crash at zero degrees as beer doesn't freeze until around minus two or three degrees celsius.

There is one other benefit of filtering in addition to the mechanical one the the Major described. It actually can reduce conditioning time in beers like lagers. I think James and Jamil have a podcast on filtering or perhaps conditioning that has the details of the chemistry.

..........

If I do a Krispy Kolsch, I use the dried German Ale Yeast called Safale K-97. Main thing is to pitch low. So cool to say 13 or 14 C before pitching and then don't let it above 15 C for say seven days. After seven days, you can let it do whatever. I would let mine go to 20 C without a worry in the world and then I would crash chill it. It probably doesn't need to take this long but that is what I do.

I usually do it all in the primary fermentor but on my next brews, I am going to start using a secondary again as I am quite susceptible to a certain flavour that I think might come from this extra time on the yeast. Who knows?

Wow! That was quick!